


Echoes of Wartime

by shyasamouse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Discussion of Death, Force Ghosts, Gen, Kinda?, The Rebellion never dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shyasamouse/pseuds/shyasamouse
Summary: There were whispers, there were always the whispers, that the Rebellion never dies.(Death, yet the Force)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Idk much about the star wars universe outside of the movies so like sorry if this is super inaccurate I guess. It's def partially inaccurate bc like well I think it's kinda stupid that only trained(??) force sensitive people can see force ghosts (im assuming this anyway bc like luke sees them but not leia and anyway its confusing) and I feel like if the force is really all encompassing, there should be more force ghosts and shit and then this happened

 

There were whispers, there were always the whispers, that the Rebellion never dies.

 

Not everyone believed it. New recruits, fresh from under the Imperial stranglehold, came expecting to die. For the Empire killed and killed and the Rebellion was always fighting a difficult battle. They believed in the Rebellion, they longed for hope, but death was inevitable, inescapable.

 

The older Rebels told hushed stories that said differently.

 

\- - -

 

Lt. Lev Saisma didn't notice anything was off for the first couple hours. Ne was busy trying to hardwire nir stolen Imperial shuttle to incorporate the newer hyperdrive ne had gotten. The hanger had gone dark long before; that had made nem pause, for a moment. But this new equipment had to be installed, sooner rather than later, and sleep was a luxury ne could indulge in later.

 

Lev knew that it wasn't _necessary,_ that no one would get mad if ne took a break, went to bed. But... in the Imperial Academy, failure hadn't been option. It was a hard habit to shake, and ne had only been at the Rebel base for a few weeks.

 

_(Lev had caught Deryt sneaking out in the middle of the night, ne had almost told on him, everyone_ knew _you weren't supposed to go anywhere after lights out, but he had given Lev this_ look _and told nem, quietly in his soft, quaking voice, about his parents and his planet and the sound of stormtroopers marching, only muffled by trapdoors, and blaster shots burning holes in walls, doors, homes, families.... and ne had whispered back about slave chains on anyone who disagreed and together they held each other and shared a longing for something better, a choice._

 

_But everyone knew that the Empire took away the children who were good at things, at piloting, at fighting (at rebelling) and that those children never got to go home. Some of their classmates talked big about glory and honor and the Empire, but Lev and Deryt walked through the halls of Academy with the weight of planets on their shoulders and the memories of screams in their ears._

 

_No one left (escaped) the Academy. Expect for the ones who did.)_

 

The Rebel base wasn't all that different, Lev reflected, at least when you were in the hanger, with a ship under your hands. It was the same chaotic mess of people who all had something to do, who all had training and orders raining down from on high.

 

But the goal was different, and no one questioned those who stayed up late to watch the stars. Many of them understood; many of them joined in. And the discussions that had been private, quiet, frightened became shared, and the burden on all of their shoulders lightened, just a little.

 

So despite the different company, the hanger was just as busy as an Imperial hanger, although the ships held in it varied much more. The high ceilings had echoed with voices and the clanking of tools all day, and even now, when the lights were down and the daily activity stilled, Lev could still hear voices. Ne finished up the last modification, stretched out the kinks in nir shoulders, and started to clean up.

 

Stepping out of the shuttle, ne wondered at how surprisingly dark it was. Perhaps ne had stayed up even later than ne had expected. Lev started off towards nir quarters, more than ready to collapse onto nir pillow. Passing a ship from within which a gentle blueish light diffused across the floor towards nir feet, Lev glanced over and found nemself slowing.

 

The people inside were wearing Rebel uniforms, worn in that way that showed many battles won. They were playing some kind of card game, and their voices drifted and wavered and Lev could not make out one word of what they said, despite the fact that they were almost near enough to touch.

 

They glowed from the inside, there was no light on in the ship's hold, and none of them looked up to meet nir eyes. One of them dropped down a card, onto a table that Lev's eyes could not find, grinned a challenge to the others. They drew another hand, and the scene blinked away, blue light lingering on Lev's eyelids as they stared at an empty ship.

 

A tingle ran down nir spine, and ne wondered if it would make sense to be scared. Ne felt like they should be, ghosts weren't supposed to seem so real, ghosts weren't supposed to exist. But Lev had heard some stories already, had dismissed them as just hazing of new members. But this scene proved them truths, if not all the details, and Lev could not find it within nemself to be scared of these lost ones. These Rebels with the scars of battles across their skin and clothes, playing games on a table that no longer existed. It felt like it was supposed to be, like a memory that made one smile in remembrance.

 

As Lev gathered nemself, and started back towards the pilot's quarters, the echo of long lost voices seemed to follow nem just past the hanger doors.

 

\- - -

 

Not everyone mentioned them. Not everyone called them the same things. Many called them ghosts, some named them the lost ones, a few said they were only echoes. Not everyone talked about them, but they were always there.

 

The echoes stayed with them, and the Rebels had accepted them long before losses became common. In a place like their base, that was a home and a cemetery all in one, a place of life and activity and a place of death and remembrance, that was both a continuous, safe foundation and an ever-changing port, should it have been a surprise to find such echoes?

 

\- - -

 

St. Ana Palis held in a gasp as she turned the corner and found another one. It was the second time this week, and yet despite the earlier incident, her heart still tried to leap its way out of her chest.

 

She closed her eyes, breathed out a quiet curse in Huttese, and opened them again to find an empty wall in front of her. No blaster marks decorated its surface, no stomach-turning stains, only blank white paint.

 

The body was gone.

 

It had been the same last time. Ana had stepped out into the slightly musty hallway, only to find her ears thrumming with distant-sounding blaster fire, and the slumping body of another Rebel troop sliding down the wall before her.

 

It hadn't been the same body, both times.

 

The first had been a pilot, far from his ship, with dark skin and a lilting accent she hadn't recognized. He'd died in the evacuation of the base on Hoth. She knew that only because she'd smiled at him in the dining hall the day before, and he'd never shown up at the new temporary base afterwards.

 

This one had been Rodian, with features she could not place, and the typical Rebel uniform. Ana didn't recognize them, and wondered what battle, what attack had claimed their life. Part of her wanted to take her question to the archives of Rebellion members. Part of her knew that looking up the lost would only make the ghosts more real.

 

It was easier to not to know.

 

Maybe, one day, someone would walk down a hallway and watch her die. Ana doubted they would want to recognize her either.

 

\- - -

 

It was rare to see someone you had known well. Everyone could recall seeing an echo at least once, it was hard not too, they lingered in the well-traveled places. Flashes of people you used to see everyday in passing still drifted in the corners of your eyes, presences so familiar that their loss seemed impossible.

 

In many ways, the familiar were never gone. The Rebels held ceremonies whenever there was time or whenever the people who cared could gather. Often informal, these meetings always held delicately the balance of grief. Some claimed that seeing a glimpse of the lost one at their own funeral meant they had passed on without issue, others claimed it tied the lost further to the realm of the living, kept them waiting and trapped. Everyone knew that only way to deal was to decide for themselves what they thought it meant.

 

The places that saw the most life and activity had the most ghosts. In the hanger, one could always expect to find a long-gone pilot slipping a helmet over their head as if in constant preparation for their last battle. Ships long destroyed seemed to waver in the corners, especially right before the base changed planets again. The command centers always held a few more officers and aides than anyone remembered calling to meetings. You could be guaranteed to pass one of the dead in the hallway without noticing, only to turn around and find them gone.

 

The memories of the Rebellion echoed throughout the base.

 

And they whispered again, to the new recruits, to the ones begging for help, to the Imperials who held them down and tortured them for information, they whispered again, _The Rebellion never dies_.

 

\- - -

 

Luke didn't notice for the first couple days at the rebel base. The Force was strong there, and he'd only just learned how to sense Force presences consciously. The base overflowed with life, Yavin IV was greener, wetter, heavier, than he had ever imagined he would see in his lifetime. The lifeforce of every nearby plant or wild animal or rebel sparked in his senses every time he tried to look, and it took time just to get used to the constant bombardment of life energy.

 

It was easier to see clearly after the Death Star had come. So many dead, so many sparks in the Force suddenly gone, and the base grew quiet as they packed up and made preparation to leave.

  
He began to sense them the most clearly on their new base. It was a temporary one, another green planet, but with less forest and more rolling hills. The new base was busy at first, the sounds of the gears of a rebellion figuring out how to settle in a new place.

 

Wandering the base as things began to calm, Luke noticed the echoes for the first time. They were little more than a twitch in the Force, a flash of dulled light that caught the edges of his perception. He saw the ones that he knew he had lost first, the pilots of Red squadron, gone one by one in the battle. Their X-wings, gleaming and sharp, free of the battle-scars that cost many their lives, filled out the lines of weary ships in the moments he glanced over, but disappeared when he turned again to check. The comm lines echoed with voices he hadn't heard since the sound of explosions cut them out, never with complete sentences, but half-finished call-signs that rang almost imperceptibly, words playing on repeat a few times before going silent abruptly. No one talked about it, but Luke saw the guilt-heavy ache of those who remained tighten its hold in those brief moments.

 

Luke felt the shadows of the lost, and they danced across his senses in the same way spots used to linger in his eyes after staring at one of Tatooine's suns for too long. He whispered quiet prayers to himself in the way of the slaves that he had been taught, wishing them peace in crossing the desert to the afterlife. He tried not to shiver at the brush of invisible hands across his shoulders in the hallways, or when Biggs' laugh drifted past him as he prepped for flight.

 

Wedge noticed him twitch away from the faint Force presences that seemed to brush against him, and smiled in gentle understanding. A week after the battle against the Death Star, what was left of the Rebellion X-wing squadrons gathered together, to drink and to wish safe passage to the lost ones that could almost be glimpsed drifting through the crowd of drunk (half with alcohol and half with grief) pilots. The air lost some of its weight, and Luke stopped twitching at the phantom sensations.

 

The Force presences never seemed to go away but faded, like a recording being played over and over until it had been worn so thin that you could barely see the shape of it. The echoes became indistinct and distant, until the survivors grew to be comforted by the familiarity of them, instead of saddened.

 

The Force reverberated with loss, and there, buffeted in the waves, drifted the Rebellion.

 

\- - -

 

Leia never told stores about ghosts.

 

But, looking up at the stars, catching a glimpse of where her home should be, the gaping tear of loss ached again, fainter for all the days that passed, but still strong enough that she could feel the screaming silence of millions of extinguished lights.

 

She felt the disturbances that followed the Rebel base through every change, every move. She welcomed each of the new lost into the hole she felt deep in her soul, and the echoes of the dead pulsed through her bones.

 

Leia held her head high, for the cracks that tore at her were nothing in comparison to the cracks that tore at the galaxy. The Rebellion lived, and they had work to do.

 

When she found out about _her brother_ , after it was all over, she went to him and together, they shared their grief for all that had been lost, and together, they began to tend to the tears that pulled at them.

 

Their methods would always be different, but the Force called to both of them for healing and for balance.

 

\- - -

 

_The Rebellion never dies._

 

Was what those who were looking for hope whispered to others as they bent their heads to the Empire.

 

_The Rebellion never dies._

 

Was what captured Rebels spat at the Imperial troops that tried to get them to betray their cause.

 

_The Rebellion never dies._

 

Was what the older members told the newest recruits, when telling ghost stories and celebrating fresh victories.

 

_The Rebellion never dies._

 

Was what they turned to for comfort when the battlefield around them echoed with the screams of the dying, and the silence of the dead.

 

_The Rebellion never dies._

 

_(Death, yet the Force)_

 

 

 


End file.
